A field guide to Pride flags

It’s almost time for SF Pride, and that means the city is sprouting rainbow flags like flowers in the desert after a rainstorm. By now most people know what the rainbow signifies, but what about those other striped flags you see waving at Pride events? I thought I knew most of their meanings, but I recently came across the most Pride items I’ve ever seen in one place, and they had keychains with flags that I’d never seen before (and my office is a castle that flies Pride flags from the turrets).

Here’s a quick overview of all the ones I could find online, plus a more detailed history and analysis for each further down. My sources are cited in-line or listed at the end.

The top 3 are the ones most commonly seen at Pride events.

The Gay Pride Rainbow

Ah, the rainbow flag. Such a beautiful and bold statement, hard to ignore or mistake for anything else. (also easy to adapt to every kind of merchandise you can imagine)

The original Gay Pride Flag was first flown in the 1978 San Francisco Pride Parade, and unlike its modern day 6-color version it was a full rainbow – it included hot pink, turquoise, and indigo instead of dark blue. Each of the stripes had a particular meaning associated with it, but mostly I think they just wanted a purty rainbow.

The pink stripe was removed relatively quickly due to fabric unavailability. The turquoise was taken out a year later when the 7-striped flag was hung vertically from lamp posts on SF’s Market Street, but the middle stripe was obscured by the post so they yanked turquoise to make it an even number of stripes. This was also when blue replaced indigo, which I assume was done to balance out the removal of the turquoise.

It’s been the same since 1979 and is recognized internationally. Awesome.

Leather Pride

Also known as “black and blue with love,” the leather pride flag is not associated with any particular sexual gender preference (though it’s used most commonly by gay men) but instead indicates a preference for kink. The “leather subculture” is somewhat hard to define as it encompasses a wide variety of activities. In general they all involve two things: leather and sex, although in modern times it’s also used for BDSM (which doesn’t necessarily include leather) or people who really really like wearing leather clothing (but not necessarily for a sexual purpose).

In fact, the leather flag has grown to represent so many other sub cultures that it’s spawned a huge variety of sub-flags. Here are some examples, taken from The Queerstory Files (I’ve swapped out the dog/puppy flag they used in the original article for the more common variant) and their meanings. Head over to that article for definitions of each.

The original leather pride flag was debuted at the International Mr. Leather event in 1989 (exactly 47 days after I was born). The colors and symbol have no official meaning. (source)

Bear Pride

In general, a “bear” is a large, hairy, overtly masculine gay man – however, the community champions inclusion and self-identification is the only required characteristic. Sometimes slim but hairy men are called “otters,” and bears who are younger or sexually submissive are called “cubs,” which I find completely adorable. (source)

The Bear Pride flag was designed by Craig Byrnes, who did his undergraduate senior project on the bear community as well as being a part of it himself. His research gave him inspiration to design a flag for the growing community and in 1995 he sketched out four different designs in crayon. These were voted on during a meeting of the Chesapeake Bay Bears club, and the winning design was circulated amongst bear communities throughout the United States. (source) It is now used by bear communities around the world.

The colors represent the fur colors of all the different types of actual bears around the world. (source)

Bisexual Pride

The bisexual pride flag was introduced in 1998 by Michael Page as an effort to give bisexual people their own rallying symbol similar to the gay rainbow flag. (source) The colors are an evolution of the “Biangle” symbol, itself a play on the original pink triangle used to represent homosexuality. (source)

Straight Pride

At first I was amused to discover the existence of heterosexual pride flags, but after several minutes of googling “straight pride” I realized they’re usually used by asshole conservative groups as an anti-gay slogan. :\ Kinda like “white pride” actually means “we hate anyone who’s not white.” There are some friendly uses of these, but not many. (source)

Lipstick Lesbian Pride

A “lipstick” lesbian means a woman who is gay and has a very feminine gender expression. Often this includes makeup (thus, lipstick), skirts, heels, etc.

This flag appears all over the internet, but it was very hard to find information about its origin. I finally traced it back to this post on a blog called This Lesbian Life. Reading through the author’s other posts, many of which are very good btw, it’s clear she was frustrated by other people not believing she was gay because she’s so femme. These are a couple lines from a blog post of hers called “The 10 Worst Things About Being a Lipstick Lesbian.”

2. Nobody ever believes that you’re gay, and thinks that you’re just going through a phase because of a bad boyfriend experience.
6. When you walk into a lesbian bar, everyone looks at you up and down and then whispers to each other, “Well she went to the wrong place.”
9. When you come out to someone they always have a crazy look on their face and then say…”Well I had no idea! You don’t seem gay!!!”

So, she created a flag of her own to represent a marginalized subgroup! Pretty cool.

Also, I think it’s seriously fucked up that this woman created this gorgeous flag, which is all over the internet, but nobody credits her. She wasn’t that hard to find, she’s on the 2nd page of a Google Search for “lipstick lesbian pride flag.”

Fat Fetish Pride

“Fat Fetish” is fairly self explanatory, although there are many self-identified fetish classifications inside of the general community. These include ‘fat body worship,’ ‘erotic weight gain,’ and ‘growth role-play.’ (source) The flag is fairly new, created in 2011 by Kevin “The Cosmopolitan” Seguin. (source) The colors are based off of Neapolitan Ice Cream, which I find rather clever. :)

Straight Allies Flag

This flag is designed for straight people who are proud allies of gay people. Why they can’t just wave a normal rainbow flag I don’t know, but here it is!

It emerged sometime in the late 2000s, but I couldn’t find any info on where it came from. The rainbow triangle thing in the middle is supposed to be an ‘A’ for ‘Activism’ or ‘Ally’ or something, with the black and white stripes representing the straight part. (source)

Lesbian Pride

This flag features a “labrys,” a double-headed axe associated with early matriarchal Minoan societies and favored by tribes of Amazon warriors who roamed the area that is now Kazakhstan. The labrys became popular with lesbian culture in the 1970s, but has fallen out of common use since. (source)

The black triangle is a throwback to nazi Germany, similar to the pink triangle used by the general gay movement. The black triangle denoted “anti-social” behavior, which included lesbianism.

Although the flag was created fairly recently (1999 by Sean Campbell) it’s not as popular now as it once was, possibly because of the relative unknown of the symbols. (source)

Asexual Pride

Asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction or a low interest in sexual activity. The asexual community is relatively new and not widely known, quite possibly because a lack of sexual interest causes much less public outcry than an “inappropriate” sexual interest.

The flag was created in 2010 through a process spear-headed by the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN). The creation and selection was extremely democratic and took place entirely online. First they asked for submissions, then posted all the designs in a poll. The community went through several rounds of voting, and finally narrowed it down to the winner that you see above.

Pansexual Pride

Pansexuality is an interesting new categorization of sexual attraction. It’s defined as being attracted to people regardless of their gender or sex, which, unlike the strict definition of “bi”-sexual, includes those who fall outside the traditional gender binary. The pink represents being attracted to women, the blue being attracted to men, and the yellow for being attracted to everyone else. (source)

There are some very cute sentiments online associated with pansexuality:

Polyamorous Pride

Polyamory is often described as “consensual, ethical, and responsible non-monogamy.” It’s basically the practice of being in a relationship(s) with multiple people at the same time, and everyone involved knowing about it and being ok.

Sadly for math nerds everywhere, the “pi” in this flag merely symbolizes the letter “p” for the first letter of “polyamory.” The flag was created by Jim Evans, but I couldn’t find info on when or where. (source)

Transgender Pride

The transgender pride flag was created by Monica Helms, a transgender woman, in 1999. The two colored stripes represent the traditional colors for baby boys and girls, and the white is for those of intersex, neutral, or other genders.

The flag is intentionally symmetric so that however you hang it, it is in the ‘correct’ orientation. Helms says this was to represent transgender people finding “correctness” in their lives. (source)

Intersex Pride

“Intersex” is a term for people who are born with mixed primary or secondary sex characteristics, making them both female and male. This condition shows up in approximately 1% of the population, though many recognized forms of it are subtle enough to go undetected for an entire lifetime. (source)

The flag, designed by Natalie Phox in 2009, blends the two stereotypical gender-binary baby colors, pink and blue, in lavender stripes on the side and a gradient in the middle. (source)

Genderqueer Pride

The Genderqueer Pride flag was created by Marilyn Roxie in 2010 with help from the Genderqueer internet community. The lavender is a mix of the traditional blue and pink gender colors for people who are a little of both, the green is meant to be the “inverse” of lavender for those outside the binary, and the white represents gender neutrality. (source)

“Genderqueer” is a term I have become increasingly fond of lately. It’s an extremely inclusive “catch-all” for anyone who doesn’t feel like they fit into one of the two standard gender definitions. Unlike most other pride flags, which represent groups of people who ‘are’ something (people who are gay, transgender, asexual, etc.), genderqueer is for people who are not either of the traditional 2 genders. It’s a group for people who feel like they don’t fit into the normal definition, and I think that’s pretty awesome.

Rubber Pride

At a very basic level rubber fetishism is similar to leather fetishism, in that it revolves around clothing made of rubber (latex, PVC, polyurethane, etc.). Likewise, it has developed a significant number of associated sub-fetishes. (source)

The Rubber Pride flag has existed since 1994, developed by Peter Tolos and Scott Moats. It was created by the two during a Vulcan America meeting in the hopes it could be used for rubber enthusiasts to find like-minded partners. Since the Rubber community is significantly smaller than the Leather or Bear communities, and its members tend not to wear their gear in public, it was especially difficult back then for fetishists to find each other.

The flags designers wanted something different from the uniform horizontal stripes that had become standard for pride flags, so they chose a black base with red and yellow for their brightness. The yellow was originally intended to represent watersports, and the red blood, but the interpretation has changed since.

Instead of using straight bars they added the zigzag to make a ‘V’ (since it had come out of a Vulcan America meeting) and also because the flag indicates a kink. Peter Tolos cheerfully said “It’s a kinky flag!” (source)

Literally. :)

Master/slave Pride

The Master/slave pride flag was debuted at the Master/slave conference in Washington DC on July 29, 2005. (doesn’t a Master/slave conference sound way more fun than WWDC?) It was designed by Master Tallen and his slave Andrew. (source)

Before the creation of this flag the M/s (and Dom/sub) community tended to use the Leather Pride flag, but Master Tallen felt this was inappropriate since plenty of members of the M/s community did not identify as leather or kink fetishists. (nor were they all gay men, the group the leather flag is most commonly associated with)

The symbols represent, to nobody’s surprise, master and submissive. The single vertical line is for authority, power, or dominance. The grouping of three horizontal lines is apparently a standard psychological symbol for submission or ‘passive intellect.’ (source) I assume they went with black and red because they’re dramatic and pretty.

Feather (Drag) Pride

The Feather Pride flag is associated with the Drag community. The symbol is a phoenix, representing the fiery passion that sprang up in the drag community during the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. (source)

The flag was created by Sean Campbell, the same man who created the labrys Lesbian Pride flag above. Campbell designed several other flags for niche communities, but these seem to be the two that have survived in common usage.

Below the Leather Pride flag your comment of “boi pride” is incorrect. The green pride flag is called the “leatherboy Pride Flag”. Boi is a term used by the leather community to denote a female, not a male. The flag was never given the name boi, it was given the name boy. However, the flag does absolutely include the boi community of females that display a masculine energy much like a boy. So I guess a fair agreement would be to call it “boy/boi pride”. I hope you correct the information :)

Fat fetish needs to be changed to ‘body positive’ or ‘fat acceptance’. There is a lot of unwanted attention towards fat people from fat fetishizers and to call ‘fat people’ a sexuality is grossly dehumanizing!! I don’t think you realize how offensive it is. Where is your ‘thin fetish’ or ‘short people fetish’? Please remove. Thank you.

There may not be flags for “thin fetish”, etc. The poster is simply sharing knowledge, not giving opinions. However, they did say that not all of these are sexualities. I’ve never met anyone who identifies as leather-sexual, the just say they have a leather fetish. If the poster must take down the fat fetish, they must remove the other fetish flags. Finally, “body positivity” and “fat acceptance” are completely different from a fat fetish. Body positivity is simply not caring about weight and seeing the beuty in heavy people. A fat fetish is a kink. Heavy people actually turn you on.

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